It's funny that many employees see moving into management as a way to stop actually doing work. In practice - if done well - it's just doing a different kind of work, but it's not always done well. Equally, many first line managers then yearn for the day when they move into middle management so that they no longer have to deal with worker bees on a daily basis. After all, managing managers should be walk in the park right?

For most of us the people in middle management are off in the distance, someone we see in the hall way or the occasional meeting. It's probably rare that we can see the value they bring to the organization, which often leads us to doubt that they bring any value to the organization. Is that a fair perception? Isn't it reinforced when during lay offs middle managers are among the first to be jettisoned?

My view is that just like first level managers, those that move into middle management often lacked a good role model prior to the move. Some do ok, most coast. Doesn't have to be that way though. I think a good middle manager might be described as:

• They hold their managers accountable for hiring, retention, training, task completion, budget, and more
• They work on growing the person who will replace them someday, giving the organization some resilience and letting those that get things done see that there is a path upward
• They translate the dreams of senior management into tasks that get done by the employees, and they often take lessons learned back to senior management as the starting step of the next dream
• They require only direction, not management. At this point they are effectively running their own business within the guidelines of the greater organization

Brian Kelley had a recent post about leadership where he makes that point that we all report to someone, that we all have obligations upward and downward. That's exactly right, and the understanding that is a core part of managing, but especially for middle managers. Becoming a middle manager means you can coast for a long time and get away with it precisely because you were given the job with the expectation that little supervision was required. So you can abuse the promotion, or do something interesting with it - which would you do?

It's also easy to feel like managing managers shouldn't take a lot of time. If you're managing five experienced and good managers that might be true. Replace one or two with newbies and you'll feel the strain quickly, they need a lot of care and feeding so they don't ruin the team they manage. You'll be spending a lot of time coordinating with other departments, meeting with clients, removing road blocks, and more.

Take a harder look at your managers manager. Are they really an empty shirt, or is it just hard to see what they do? One good way to infer their ability is to look at your own manager. If they are competent, disciplined, and held accountable (and thus hold you accountable) that's a good sign that they work for someone good. If they seem to screw up, miss things, and not really be very good at what they do (with no signs of improvement), well...then their manager either isn't very good, or is lost in the weeds.